Barn News

Among the few public observers to whom I pay attention, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a place at the table if for no other reason than his monumentally insightful book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Now, change gears to the old insight from the military logistics and supply realm, “Two is one, and one is none,” an exhortation on the value of redundancy for important operating systems and supplies. Well, that particular old black swan bit me in the nether regions recently as I found that I’d better start with a bigger number for electricity supply.

Since becoming my own Power Company for The Barn there have always been hiccups; a connection or section of water line breaks, storm debris clogs the hydro system intake or turbine nozzle, even a nearby lightning ground blowing the fuses on the solar array. In these cases the interruption of one or the other power source is not an activity-stopping hurdle, although it can be a bit of a nuisance and interruption to address.

In essence my system is a hybrid of the microhydrolectric turbine generating power 24/7 through much of the year, along with the array of six 235-watt solar panels cranking out juice whenever it is daylight and they are not buried under snow. When you are your own public utility, maintenance is never far from the “To Do” list.

My two electron sources are tied together in a complex control system designed and installed by Rich at Nooutage.com and my friend BillR, a retired electrical engineer with a robotics specialty. For the past half dozen years or so it has been humming along, providing all of what I need in the barn for general usage. Even in the dead of winter, when I have the hydro system mothballed during the coldest weather, the solar panels keep the batteries charged and I can operate pretty much normally if I am the least bit attentive. If I know I need to use a lot of electricity with a machine or a heating coil (processing beeswax in cookers, for example) I know I need to wait for a nice sunny day.

When I have a particular need for ultra high wattage consumption, like my smelting furnace of kiln, I have to fire up the smaller (3500w) of my two Coleman Suburu generators for that isolated need.

Flash forward to three weeks ago as we were spending a day in the studio recording another session for the Gragg Chair video. I had checked the system the night before as I do routinely, and it was working fine. Batteries were topped off, solar panels pounding out watts, hydro puttering along. (On a normal day each of the production components produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 5kwH, higher on a sunny summer day). Just as I was coming to the end of a session of steam bending some chair parts the room went dark. Quickly I hustled down the hill — I do not run any longer since breaking my hip three years ago — and saw that the system had shut itself down for no apparent reason. It booted back up manually, but still the work for the recording session was lost.

I was leaving town the next morning for a week so I put off conducting the investigation of the hiccup until I got back.

what it should look like

what it did look like

On returning I was able to confirm that the solar panels were contributing zero to the system performance. It. Jjust. Went. To. Sleep. The hydro turbine was still working as it should so the overall system function was adequate, but several days of chasing down the solar inactivity proved fruitless, despite numerous emails and phone calls with BillR, who assigned me several detailed troubleshooting tasks, and literally hours on hold with the tekkies at the solar control module manufacturer.

In the end the tekkies told me there was some sort of hardware failure and I needed to disconnect the solar control unit and send it to them for their ministrations. So I did.

As all of this was unfolding, the hydro turbine suddenly (literally overnight) developed the growling rumble of worn out bearings. I took it off-line as soon as I noticed this, dealing with two $15 bearings is one thing but letting them run to destruction might have damaged the $2k turbine and that was not high on my list of risks to take. After speaking to the turbine manufacturer I decided to remove the turbine core and ship it back to him for new bearings. Replacing the bearings myself was not really an option as I do not possess some of the specialized tools required for the job, although I will have to address that shortcoming in the future.

Quick as a bunny I was without any power system input to the barn and things ground to a halt, including cancelling/rescheduling the Boullework Marquetry workshop that was slated for this weekend.

For now all I can do is wait on the turbine manufacturer to return the turbine core with then new bearings and hear back from the solar control module manufacturer for a report on that unit, and contact the local electrician to come and wire in my gas generator to the system.

I clearly need for “2 is 1” to become “3 is 2,” or maybe even “4 is 3.”

Stay tuned.

In a true Black Swan event both my redundant power sources failed at the same time. Maybe I should have called Nassim Taleb first.

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2 Comments on Black Swan Events, or 2 is 1, 1 is None

Sorry to hear about all your problems with your own grid.
In Germany I once saw a unit comprising of a small diesel engine connected to a generator. The cooling water was connected to the heating of the house, so in essence it worked like an oil fired boiler that also happened to produce electricity. The electricity was sold to the grid, and it started and stopped automatically whenever there was a need for hot water in the house for heating purposes.

The downside was that the system was fairly costly, and especially if it had to operate as an emergency system.

We have our own water supply, so if the electricity goes south, we are also out of water. But generally the electricity supply in Denmark is very stable, so I haven’t put much effort into getting an emergency generator thought the idea has crossed my mind once in a while.

Fortunately the water source for the cabin and barn is an artesian spring about 500 feet up the hill so there is not danger of loosing water (basically we have Evian coming up from a hole in the ground). Also, for the cabin our main heat sources are a cast iron wood stove in the living room and a propane wall furnace in the kitchen, and our cook stove in the kitchen is bi-fuel with a wood side and a propane side. So for us, our survival is not a problem should the power go out for a time, other than having to heat water in a pot on the wood stove and use candles for reading.

In the barn it is surprising how much work (especially cleaning and organizing) can be done without electricity. The benefits of an uninterrupted row of windows around the entire main floor.